


Back from the Dark

by SerStolas



Series: Breaking Dark [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Child Abandonment, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Guilt, Past Torture, Post TFA, Rey Skywalker, You can pry this headcanon from my cold dead fingers, past psychological torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-11-14 03:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11199348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerStolas/pseuds/SerStolas
Summary: She’d been a lot of things over the course of her life: Darksider, smuggler, bounty hunter, wife, mother.  Smuggler and bounty hunter were titles she would probably still claim.  Mother and wife, she’d lost long ago.Fair warning, this story gets fairly dark in some places.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Star Wars belongs to LucasArts/Disney.
> 
> I like Mara Jade from the EU. I love Mara Jade from the EU. If Mara Jade can't be in the real canon universe, I can damn well write fan fiction where she exists.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at nytemere.tumblr.com

She stared out the ship cockpit at the small crowd gathering on the tarmac outside. That she had the right clearance codes when no one recognized her ship caused a stir on base. People wondered who this single pilot in a freighter was, why she was here, and why they hadn’t seen her ship here before.

She rose from the pilot’s chair and shifted the straps of her belt and holster, feeling the comfortable weight of blaster at one hip, lightsaber on the other.

Her steps took her slowly through the ship, her eyes flickering over control panels and interior surfaces as she tried to figure out what she would say. She’d been thinking about that for days, but the words still eluded her. 

The first question she knew she’d get was _where had she been_ for the past several years. She’d vanished not long after the fall of Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy, too wrapped up in her own grief and anger to really care what anything thought about it at the time.

One breath in, one breath out. Ground and center yourself, she thought, don’t let your emotions completely get the best of you.

She’d been a lot of things over the course of her life: Darksider, smuggler, bounty hunter, wife, mother. Smuggler and bounty hunter were titles she would probably still claim. Mother and wife, she’d lost long ago. And Darksider? Well, there were issues with that.

She caught sight of her face in a mirrored surface as she opened the ship ramp. Once bright red hair shot with silver, pulled back into a severe braid at the nape of her neck. The flight suit she wore was more practical than what she might have worn in her younger days. It was easy enough to slide armor on over when she went hunting.

At least she could tell them she’d never collected on a bounty for the First Order, not that she was sure they would care.

The Resistance.

She should have come here years ago. It was time to stop hiding; time to stop burying herself in grief and anger. Light and Dark, she’d walked both during her years, and now she felt sometimes she walked a razor thin edge between the two.

But she knew, perhaps better than most, how bad the First Order was, and the nightmare a Totalitarian regimen would bring to the galaxy.

Years of training ensured that her boot heels made little noise as she stepped down the ramp and onto the tarmac, to find herself being stared at by more than a few curious Resistance personnel.

Then the compact figure of General Leia Organa-Solo came striding through the crowd.

She could see the grief in Leia’s eyes. She’d felt Han Solo’s death weeks ago. It seemed that Ben Solo was truly gone, replaced completely by Kylo Ren.

She hated that name.  
Both women stood there eying each other for several minutes, surrounded by wide eyed soldiers, pilots and techs.

Then she found herself opening her arms in a hopeful gesture, and a smile broke over General Organa-Solo’s expression. Leia pulled her into a tight hug.

“It’s been a long time,” Leia said at last, tears in the corner of her eyes.

She wouldn’t pretend to be a hard ass anymore, she was too old for that. “Too long,” she admitted aloud. “I lost myself there for awhile.”

“You aren’t the only one,” Leia replied, gesturing for her to follow.

A couple of eyes around them went wider when they saw the lightsaber clipped to her belt, but clearly the General had welcomed her, so no one stopped her when she followed Leia towards the command center.

She caught up easily to Leia, and the two strode side by side, like equals, into the command center. Her eyes wandered the room, recognizing Ackbar almost immediately. She couldn’t be surprised to see him here. His eyes took her in and she saw him nod as she and Leia stepped into Leia’s office, almost as if he’d been expecting to see her.

As she took a seat across from Leia in the General’s office, her red brows knitted together. “How long have you known I was coming?”

Leia shrugged and offered her a cup of luke warm caf. Though it would be bitter, she accepted the cup and took a long sip.

“I had a vision a few days ago,” Leia admitted. “Those were some rather old and obscure codes you were using. I had to tell them it wasn’t a First Order trick.”

“Well I’m glad they believed your Force intuition and didn’t shoot me down,” she said, smiling faintly. 

She was grateful Leia hadn’t asked where she’d been.

“So, how much do you know?” Leia asked bluntly, steepling her fingers as she regarded the red haired woman across from her.

“The First Order wiped out a whole system, the New Republic is in frenzy,” she replied. “There were rumors of a planet destroyer, a lot bigger this time though. Supposedly Resistance forces destroyed it.” She lifted her brows. 

Leia nodded. “Poe Dameron was captured by the First Order,” Leia wouldn’t say her son’s other name. “He was rescued by a Stormtrooper who decided to defect. They crashed on Jakku, the former trooper met with a desert girl and Poe’s droid. They stole a ship that happened to be the _Falcon_ and made to Maz’s.” 

Leia’s expression darkened as she gripped her caf cup. “We came a bit too late, they got the desert girl, and we picked up the former trooper, Finn, is his name now, and he, Han, and Chewie went in and saved the girl.”

Her brows creased again when she realized Leia was deliberately not saying the girl’s name. A very odd sensation came over her, but she asked first, “Is that when Han?”

Leia nodded, her eyes clouding.

She winced. “I’m sorry, Leia.”

“It wasn’t your fault, it was never your fault,” the General replied. She gave a shuttering sigh. “The girl…you know her.”

She felt ice creeping through her veins. “What’s her name?”

“Rey,” Leia admitted.

“Breha?” she asked in a low tone, her hands gripping her caf mug so hard Leia thought it might shatter.

“Yes,” Leia replied.

“They were supposed to keep her safe,” she swore. She felt guilt wrack her. “If I’d stayed, if I’d-“

“You can’t change the past,” Leia replied sharply. “Focus on what you can do now.”

She stopped abruptly, jerking like a puppet on strings, and nodded. “What can we do now?”

“She’s gone to find Luke. That was Poe’s mission, to get part of the map. R2-D2 had the other portion,” Leia replied. “They should be returning in a few weeks.”

“Kriff,” she swore. She swallowed. “Will they even want to see me?”

Leia shrugged. “I can’t answer that question, Mara. But I say you stay and see.”

Mara Jade Skywalker took a deep breath, and nodded. “I will,” she said at last.


	2. Holding Pattern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mara settles into life on base while waiting for Luke and Rey's return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to LucasArts/Disney

Mara found herself accompanying Leia most of the rest of the first day, being introduced, or reintroduced to members of the Resistance. Recognition lit in the eyes of a few, and some recognized her on sight, and she could see questions lingering in those gazes. It also raised a few eyebrows when Leia introduced her as just Mara Jade, by Mara’s own request.

She wasn’t quite sure claiming the name Skywalker was for the best right now, at least not until she’d talked to Luke, assuming he would talk to her.

She’d been mentally preparing herself for rejection since Leia had told her that Breha, no, Rey, had gone looking for Luke.

Leia took great care to introduce her to Poe Dameron and Finn, and Mara sensed it was more than just because they were the heroes of Starkiller.

Poe Dameron frowned slightly when Leia introduced her, as if he were mulling over the name.

“I met you once, as a child,” Poe said at last.

Mara closed her eyes a moment against an onslaught of memory and nodded.

“You did. I came to visit your family with someone,” she said carefully.

“With Luke Skywalker.” Poe’s brow creased into a frown, and she saw Finn leaning in towards Poe unconsciously.

“Skywalker and I have a history,” Mara replied. “He was a friend, once.” If that wasn’t the understatement of the day she didn’t know what was. She chose to guide the conversation elsewhere. “You look like your mother, Poe. From what I remember of her, Shara Bey would be very proud of you.”

Poe smiled then, if a little sadly. “Thanks.” He met her gaze with serious brown eyes, a look that told her he knew exactly what she was doing, but he let himself get pulled into a conversation instead about how his father was doing on Yavin 4.

Finn seemed particularly enraptured by Poe’s descriptions, and she wondered about the two of them. Leia mentioned that Finn was never far from Poe unless Poe was out on a mission.

Even more interest was the sense she got from Finn. Her green gaze sought Leia’s brown, and the General nodded.

“Are you training him?” Mara asked Leia bluntly as they left Finn and Poe at the entrance to the medical wing.

“I am,” Leia replied calmly. “He has a fair amount of anxiety from overcoming his conditioning. Meditation can help with that.”

“And a great deal else I suspect,” Mara replied, recalling being in a similar position, decades ago, after the Emperor had died, and overcoming her own conditioning that Palpatine had inserted in her mind from early childhood. “How goes it?”  
“Carefully,” Leia replied. She shot Mara a speculative glance. “You might talk to him. He and Poe are both seeing our mental medical professional here, but their experiences are far from the norm of traumatic mind injury that we’re used to dealing with. While your experience is not the same, it is as close as we can get to Finn’s. If you’re willing, it might help him to hear it from someone who broke through their own conditioning.” Leia sighed. “And Poe, well, you know how it feels to have your mind invaded by a Sith Lord. Poe refuses to talk to me about it, but maybe he would be willing to talk to you.”

Mara, even after almost three decades, could remember Palpatine’s sickening touch in her head.

“I can try,” she said slowly. “Finn and I may be able to relate, but I can tell you that Poe isn’t going to talk about it until he’s ready to.”

“I worry about them both, Mara,” Leia confided. “I failed Ben, I don’t want to fail Poe and Finn.”

Mara gave a short, bitter bark of laughter. “You want to talk about failing your child, Leia? You loved Ben, you and Han both did. At least he knew that, and he chose to turn away. I left my daughter with someone I thought I could trust and she ended up completely abandoned Jakku.” She shook her head, swallowing the bile that rose with her guilt before it could consume her. “No Leia, you won’t fail those two”

Leia gazed at Mara as if she didn’t quite believe that last statement. She also didn’t deny what Mara had said about herself.

Well, good to know they were in agreement on that.

“There’s a quiet room off the training grounds,” Leia told her. “I’m holding a training session with Finn there at 07:00 tomorrow. You happen to still have a training droid?”

Mara lifted her red brows. “I do.”

“Then bring it. I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Leia informed her,

She watched her sister-in-law turn without another word and head back towards the Command Center, leaving Mara to her own devices.

~~  
The incessant beeping of her alarm woke Mara up at 05:30 and she forced herself to crawl out of bed, though she would have much preferred a few more hours of sleep. She was too old for this.

She forced herself into the sonic refresher on her ship and then dressed in the nearest clean clothing she could find, which turned out to be a pair of gray tactical pants and another cream shirt. She slithered into clean socks and shoved on her boots, thinking that her days of black synthleather body suits were long gone.

The sun hadn’t risen yet as she made her way to the base mess, mechanically gathering food without really noticing what it was and finding an empty end of a bench.

Even this early there were a number of troops up, several casting her curious glance since she was clearly new on base, and a number of years older than new recruits. Mara snorted to herself, thinking she was old enough to have given birth to most of these troops. That thought immediately brought to mind Rey and her faint, amused smile fell.

She shook her head, thinking there was no point in dwelling on self pity. Self pity would only get you distracted and possibly killed in the field. The best she could do was admit her mistakes and ask for forgiveness. The guilt over it was hers alone to battle. Whether Luke, and in some ways more importantly, Rey, would want anything to do with her was up to them.

If there was anything she’d learned, it was that you could not control the actions of others.

She tromped, mostly silent, to the training room Leia had directed her to after breakfast, lightsaber clipped to her belt and a training droid tucked under one arm.

She wasn’t surprised to find Finn and Leia already there, settled in meditative poses.

A frown creased Finn’s brow as he regarded her, his eyes falling to the lightsaber at her side. Leia hadn’t gone into too much detail over who Mara was the day before.

“Morning Leia, Finn,” she said as she set the droid aside. 

Leia smiled fondly at Finn. “Mara’s another force user.” She paused and considered her next words. “She understands about mental conditioning. I thought it might be helpful for you to talk to her.”

Mara saw Finn’s eyes narrow as he examined her more closely. She saw the questions in his eyes.

She took a deep breath. “I was trained under the Imperial Emperor,” she told Finn in an even tone. She saw his eyes go wide but forged on. “He conditioned me, from childhood. When he died, it did a number on my head, and it took me some time to break his hold.” She grimaced. “I did a fair amount that I’m not proud of.”

Finn measured her words, his eyes narrowed again. Finally he said, “How did you feel, after you broke free completely?”

“Disoriented, lost, almost suicidal for awhile,” Mara admitted. “I didn’t know quite how to react normally to kindness, or love.”

She saw Finn stiffen, and then slowly, he met her gaze fully. “I know that feeling,” he said quietly.

“Well, maybe then we can talk about it sometime, if you need to,” Mara told him.

Finn looked thoughtful. “I might take you up on that.”

“For now, back to meditation,” Leia told him. “Join us, if you will, Mara. Then later Mara and I can program the training droid she brought.” Leia grinned at Finn. “Give you more of a challenge than this old woman with a lightsaber can.”

Finn shook his head. “Don’t depreciate yourself like that, General.”

“Leia, I’ve told you a thousand times to call me Leia,” Leia replied gently. 

Finn only smiled back at her.

That morning established a pattern in Mara’s days on the base. She’d meet Leia and Finn early in the morning to meditate and observe Finn’s training, and after a few days, actively training him. There were some days Leia was needed from early on in the Command center, so Mara ran through drills with him after meditation.

Some mornings then they’d find a quiet space and just talk. She had a feeling Finn only spoke about his time with the First Order to a few people, namely Poe and his doctor, unless it was to delve into First Order tactics with the commanding officers. Somehow, though, he felt comfortable opening up to her, perhaps because she’d told him about her childhood in the Imperial Palace first.

She felt a quiet horror at the similarities in how the Emperor had treated her, and how the First Order treated the children they kidnapped. Storm Troopers, though, seemed far more expendable to the Order than she’d been to the Empire.

Small wonder that Finn was even sane.

She also witnessed the hesitant affection between Poe and Finn, as if both were afraid they would push the other too far. It wasn’t quite pining, but it was close.

After morning drills, the first day, she found herself wandering to the hanger and offering a hand at maintenance on the ships. Some of the techs and pilots seemed hesitant at first, she was an old woman they didn’t know, but she proved readily enough that she knew was much or more about starships than some of the techs.

It was a way to make herself useful, she told herself, while she waited.

Evenings she had dinner with Leia. While their relationship had been strained when Luke had first disappeared, Leia seemed genuinely intent on making Mara feel welcome. Perhaps, Mara thought, it was because Leia had lost so much already. They were family, no matter how utterly messed up the Skywalker family was.

It was a holding pattern, she knew, until Luke and Rey arrived, but it was one she could live with.


	3. Trepedation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke and Rey return to D'Qar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to Disney/LucasArts

The morning marking her seventh week on base began normally enough, with her usual early morning breakfast and cup of caf before she felt ready to really talk to anyone beyond the necessary. She felt a certain undercurrent on the Resistance base, though, a tremble of anticipation.

Finn and Leia were talking in low voices, an edge of excitement to Finn’s voice when Mara entered the training room that morning. Mara lifted a red brow as she approached; wondering what had the young man so amped up.

Leia met Mara’s gaze, and for a moment something close to sympathy hovered. “Luke and Rey should be arriving by this evening,” Leia informed her.

That would explain Finn’s excitement. Finn wore his expressions on his sleeve, probably unused to trying to keep a poker face after so many years of wearing a helmet around others. He grinned at Mara. “She’s training to be an actual Jedi. I knew she could find Skywalker, if anyone could!”

To Finn, Skywalker probably seemed like a legend; someone the First Order would have made into a boogeyman.

Mara felt her heart beat a tad faster, more in trepidation than excitement.

“Well then let’s get to our morning exercises,” Mara said with forced cheer. “I’m sure Rey will be glad to see how far you’ve progressed while she’s been gone.”

Mara, at least, had one Force of a poker face and Finn didn’t seem to detect how forced her cheerfulness was. Thank Force for small favors, she thought. She didn’t want to dampen Finn’s cheerfulness though. The man had faced enough in his short life.

For Mara, the daydreams of scenarios she’d played over in her dreams for the past several years, some good, some bad, put her on edge. For Finn, and hopefully for Leia, it would be a very pleasant reunion. Mara wasn’t sure about herself. She wouldn’t blame Rey if the girl hated Mara. As for Luke, well, their parting hadn’t been the best before he’d decided to vanish off the face of the galaxy.

Life would have been easier had she remained in hiding, but she could only run so far from her own past. It was time to own up to her mistakes, and live with the consequences.

Dusk was settling over D’Qar when the Millennium Falcon hailed the control tower and eased down through the atmosphere.

A fairly large crowd gathered on the tarmac, with Leia, Finn, and Poe at the head. From her vantage somewhere further back, Mara could see Finn clutching at Poe Dameron’s hand like a lifeline, and the half worried, half amused expression on Poe’s face as he squeezed Finn’s hand comfortingly. Those two were completely gone on each other, though she’d yet to hear either of them publically admit their emotions for each other. She hoped for them that it would come in time.

The Falcon landed with an enviable ease and precision for the old bird, and then the ramp lowered. Chewbacca came first, quickly enveloping Leia in a tight hug, the embrace of old friends who mourned together. Mara still saw the traces of grief in Leia’s expression in unguarded moments, rare as they were.  
Mara Jade’s breath caught as a lean, fierce young woman came down the ramp, her eyes searching the crowd. They fell almost immediately on Finn and Poe, and the girl launched herself into Finn’s arms. Poe let Finn’s hand drop so that Finn could catch Rey, and Finn held the girl tightly, whispering in her ear. They stood like that for several minutes, until, tentatively, Rey lifted her gaze to Poe’s, and reached a hand out to the pilot. Poe looked surprised, but he let Rey take his hand, and he was pulled into a three way embrace.

More slowly, Luke descended, gray hood pulled over his head, face hidden within the recesses of his robe. Chewie had released Leia, and she stood there, looking up with an expression torn between anger and relief, as Luke finally stood before her.

Mara could almost sense his unease, and his weariness, as he gazed at Leia. Gently, the General pushed her brother’s hood back and embraced him. Luke stiffened for a moment, then wrapped his arms around his sister and let himself sag in her strong grip.

Mara stayed back in the crowd, just observing for right now. Leia had warned Luke and Rey that Mara was here, on base, but as far as she knew, neither had given Leia any indication on their reaction to that news, or else Leia had chosen not to tell her.

Better to let them have this happy reunion, Mara thought. Leia knew where to find her. If they wanted to seek her out, they would.

Even though part of her mind screamed that it was the coward’s way, Mara didn’t want to interrupt their moment right now.

Then she felt two sets of eyes on her, and a probing sense in the Force. Her gaze snapped up.

One pair of blue eyes, and one pair of brown, stared at her across the distance.

Rey’s expression was one of mild curiosity, but nothing that made her leave the embrace of Finn and Poe Dameron for the moment.

_If you want to talk, seek me out_ Mara thought across the distance. She saw Rey’s head tilt slightly, and then the girl gave the slightest nod before turning back to Poe and Finn who were whispering quietly to her.

Luke’s blue eyes regarded her with a mix of regret, anger, and weariness. She gave him a similar glance in return. His mouth thinned for a moment then he looked back at Leia.

Mara took that opportunity to turn and walk away, first heading towards her ship, and then changing direction mid-stride, and heading instead towards the jungle surrounding the base. She needed to clear her head right now.

She didn’t see Rey and Luke both glancing towards her one last time before she vanished from view behind the buildings and trees of the base.


	4. The Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey asks Mara about the past, and Mara relays her reasons to Rey, however much good or bad they may do her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to Disney/LucasArts.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at nytemere.tumblr.com

The first morning after Rey and Luke’s return to the Resistance, Mara awoke to a message from Leia on her data pad from 04:30 hours advising that Rey and Finn had been given a few days off from training to spend time together and for Rey to adjust to the Resistance base while Luke was closeted away with Leia and her senior military staff.

Mara scrubbed at her face with her hands as she sat on the edge of her bunk, debating what to do. Finally she forced herself up and into the sonic refresher on board her ship as usual, and then made her way towards the mess once she was dressed.

Even if Finn had been given the day off, Mara would still run through meditation and her own personal drills. She hoped keeping to her new routine as much as she could would help her from going stir crazy and trying to find Rey or Luke to talk to them.

She admitted to herself that she feared those reunions; Rey’s because she’d failed her daughter so spectacularly, and Luke’s because their last interaction years ago had been perhaps the worst fight they’d ever had in their time together.

Instead of going to the training room, though, she headed outside, finding a quiet clearly just beyond base to settle in and meditate. 

The old practice helped clear her mind a little, at least. 

Mara knew she couldn’t change the past. She would always feel some guilt for what had happened to Rey. Wallowing in that guilt wouldn’t help her though. Self-pity could be a step down the dark side she probably couldn’t afford.

Focus on what you can do now, Mara told herself. If Rey was amicable, she would answer whatever questions, no matter how painful they might be, that the girl had. Though her reasons didn’t excuse the outcome, she’d still give them if Rey really wanted to know. 

Otherwise she would see where she could be useful. There was still a war against the First Order to fight, and Mara knew better than most the damage they could do when they were hunting someone. Her fingers drifted to the left side of her face tracing the network of scars there.

She hadn’t told Leia how bad the vision in that eye was, she hadn’t needed to. Kyber crystals did nasty things when they exploded.

She ran through combat forms after meditation, her body flowing easily with the practice weapon as she followed familiar patterns. She stayed in top physical form, even at her age. Life as a bounty hunter and a smuggler had required it.

She didn’t let herself think about what her life might have been like if she’d gone back for Rey after Luke’s students had been massacred. At the time she’d been hunted by the Knights of Ren, and it had taken years to manage to really get under the radar. Nor did she let herself think about what it might have been like to follow Luke directly.

She considered, briefly, returning to base and helping the mechanics that day, but she wasn’t sure she’d be good company right now. The forest offered a certain sense of peace right now that Mara had spent years chasing.

It was almost dusk when she felt the presence of someone nearby.

Mara gulped a mouth full of water from her canteen and turned to face the presence, and somehow managed to keep herself from trembling as she gazed on the gray and tanned clad figure of Rey Skywalker.

“I went looking for you earlier,” Rey informed her, standing at the edge of the clearing. Her hair was pulled back into a braid coiled about her head, something Mara had seen on Leia a hundred times before. “Then I went looking with the Force.”

“It’s a useful set of senses,” Mara agreed. “Something you want?” she asked, not sure how else to continue the conversation.

“You told me to seek you out if I had questions,” Rey reminded her.

“I did.” Mara gestured for Rey to join her on a nearby log and moved over, settling herself on one end. “Introductions first, I suppose. I’m Mara Jade Skywalker.”

It was the first time she’d said her full name aloud in years, Mara realized. The name Skywalker felt odd on her tongue.

Breha- Rey, sat with the easy grace of the young on the log, less than a meter away from Mara. “Rey…Skywalker,” the girl replied, saying the last name as if she were testing the taste of it. 

They sat there for several minutes before Rey spoke again. “So you’re my mother.” She didn’t make it a question.

“I gave birth to you,” Mara replied. “Not quite sure I can claim the title of ‘mother’ now, but I was, once, yes.”

“Why did you abandon me?” Rey asked bluntly.

Some part of Mara appreciated the fact that this girl pulled no punches.

“I can give you my reasons, but they aren’t much justification,” Mara warned. “But I’ll tell you anyhow.”

Rey shrugged, obviously waiting for Mara to continue.

Mara folded her hands in front of her, and she could feel Rey’s eyes boring into the scaring on the left side of her face as Mara stared straight ahead for a moment, before turning her green eyes to meet Rey’s brown.

Brown eyes like Leia, unlike the green and blue of her parents. But Rey deserved eye contact for this.

“It started with a Force vision while I was still pregnant with you,” Mara forced the words out. “I saw dark robes, and saw you, as a youngling, being cut down. Luke wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, really. He was worried, but he was worried about a lot of things back then. He was striving to recreate the Jedi temple, but it was one trainer with far too many students.” She shook her head. “I didn’t always walk the line of light and dark. I was the Emperor’s Hand once, a lot time ago. I was Sith, or something that passed for it.” 

Rey’s expression remained one of calculated curiosity, but Mara saw those brown eyes flicker in response to her words. They never had mentioned to Breha how she and Luke had met.

“The first time I met Luke, I was trying to kill him,” Mara admitted. “Compulsion, from the Emperor, one last ‘gift’ before he died. Luke helped me break it later, turned me to the light, or something close to it. I’m more Gray than Jedi. I was never really a Jedi.” She sighed. “There was something out there, I knew, but I didn’t know what, and Luke seemed to sense a darkness but wasn’t sure what it was. Then he was so involved in training padawans, and Leia sent Ben to Luke…that’s when things really started falling apart.”

“How so?” Rey asked softly.

Mara met her daughter’s gaze squarely. “I sensed something I didn’t trust in Ben when he first arrived at the Academy. There were shadows around that boy, shadows that Luke couldn’t seem to dispel, and shadows that Leia and Han feared. He was 10 when you were born. He seemed, at first, rather interested in you because you were his little cousin. He used to fly you around like an X-wing, when you were a toddler. But Leia and Han never seemed to have enough time for him, to come visit him. Leia was a Senator, Han was a General, and it just..” She shook her head. “It wasn’t good for any of the three of them, and I don’t know that any of them can really be fully blamed for it. But at some point while Luke was training him, Snoke managed to get a hold on Ben Solo. I had the same Force vision when you were five that I’d had when pregnant. I saw Ben striking you down in the Temple. I didn’t want you any where near it then, I didn’t want Luke training you in the temple at all. I started letting you spend less time around Ben. I knew something was going to happen.”

“And the truth was, I feared myself too. I’d walked deep in the Darkside at one point. Luke and I already knew you were Force sensitive, but he was so busy with his students, I didn’t want him to try training you yet. We fought, more than once, on that subject,” Mara continued, watching Rey’s careful expression. “Eventually I had another Force vision, of you in the sand. I feared myself, I feared Ben, and I feared for you. So I latched onto that Force vision and I told Luke I was hiding you.”

Rey frowned. “Hiding me? Why didn’t you stay with me?”

She could hear the edge of hurt in that tone, and it cut Mara to the core.

“I shouldn’t have abandoned you,” Mara admitted in a tense tone. “But I did. I took you to Jakku. I knew it couldn’t be Tattooine, not where Luke was from. I left you with associates of mine that I thought would protect you and keep you safe. I was wrong. They ended up abandoning you as badly as I did.”

“What did you do, after you left?” Rey demanded sharply. 

“I went back to Luke,” Mara said. “He was furious, understandably so. After I took you to Jakku, I didn’t tell him where you were, and our fights started rivalling Han and Leia’s. Ben vanished one day, supposedly to go and visit his parents…when he came back he wasn’t alone and he was no longer Ben Solo. Kylo Ren and his Knights of Ren destroyed the Jedi temple, killed all of Luke’s students, and sent Luke into hiding. I wasn’t there, but they knew who I was. They’ve been hunting me off and on since.”

Mara grabbed her canteen and took another swig of water. “That’s it, really,” she told Rey. “I abandoned you in part because of couple of Force visions and I was afraid of my own influence on you if I stayed. I –should- have stayed with you on Jakku, or taken you somewhere else, hidden you away myself, but I feared what would happen if I trained you.” Her lips twisted into an unhappy smile. “Yoda used to warn Luke about fear, how it lead to the dark side. And here my fear completed kriffed up your life.”

Rey let out an explosive breath and shot to her feet. 

Mara knew it was all a lot to process, and Rey was staring at her with wild eyes.

But somehow the girl pulled a mask of composure over herself. 

“Thank you for telling me,” Rey told her stiffly. “You have given me much to think about, Mo-“

Rey couldn’t bring herself to call Mara that word.

“Call me Mara, for now at least,” Mara advised wearily. “You don’t ever have to call me by that other word if you don’t want to.”

Rey nodded stiffly again. “I think I need some air and to think. I will…speak to you later, Mara.”

Then Rey was gone, leaving a void in Mara’s life once again.

When she was certain she was completely alone, Mara let the tears of guilt and sorrow fall from her eyes, staring out blindly at the forest around her.


	5. Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mara deals with the consequences of her talk with Rey, and is knocked off balance when Rey, Finn, and Poe have to seek her out for advice.
> 
> So this chapter and the last one were fairly dark and deep. Hopefully, more happy chapters to come.

Rey resolutely avoided Mara for the next two days. Mara kept a healthy distance between herself and the girl, knowing that what she'd told Rey could lead to any range of emotions that Rey needed to sort through.

It was fairly clear by dinner on the first day after her talk with Rey that Rey had shared it with Finn and Poe. Rey had quickly made friends on the base, but she stuck closest to the ex-stormtrooper and the pilot. At dinner that night she saw Finn shoot an angry look her way when she passed their table, and she could feel the undercurrent of his anger towards her on Rey's behalf. Poe too wore a similar expression when he glanced towards her. 

Finn and Rey were evidently better at shielding their thoughts, as they were incredibly strong in the Force, but Poe's surface thoughts were fairly easy to pick up on. He was angry, more because Mara's actions had denied Rey an ordinary childhood and love, than anything else.

When she looked at the trio, even from a distance, she could see a line of blue fire in the Force that bound the three of them together. Poe was only remotely Force sensitive, but evidently it had been enough.

Mara cursed silently to herself, wondering if Leia and Luke were watching those three particularly closely and had bothered to explain Force Bonds to them. 

As incredibly kriffed up as Mara's childhood in the Imperial Court had been, Force Bonds had been explained to her, and with what she'd been told and studied, she could recognize the bond between Poe, Finn, and Rey immediately.

Not your business, Mara, she thought to herself, not unless Leia or Luke fails to explain it to them.

She was the last person they wanted to see anyway.

On the second night after her conversation with Rey, Leia asked to meet privately.

Her sister-in-law's gaze was sympathetic when she mentioned Luke was starting up Rey and Finn's training again the following day, but she suggested that Mara steer clear of it for now, given the general undercurrent of emotions towards Mara from those three.

Day three she gave the training room a wide berth and meditated on her own in the forest. After running through several combat drills, she headed towards the hanger to help the mechanics out.

There was a noticeable chill towards her from some of the pilots and mechanics she encountered, ones she recognized among Rey's new group of friends. While she had a good feeling that Rey hadn't told anyone other than Finn and Poe what Mara had related to her, their general anger towards her was evidently enough to color the attitude of others towards her.

Just kriffing great.

Well, it wasn't the first time Mara had been despised, it wouldn't be the last, and she was stubborn to a fault. She developed a new pattern, over the next few days, meditating and training on her own to keep herself in fighting condition in the morning, spending the afternoons working in the hanger. Finn, Rey, and Poe continued to avoid her and she avoided them. Luke she only saw in passing. Leia she spoke to some evenings when Leia had a few minutes alone.

Most of all, she watched and observed.

She saw the tentative way that Rey interacted with Poe, and the careful way he interacted with her. He saw the love Finn had for both of them. All of this was new for the three of them, and they were so carefully gliding around each other. Most of all though, they were working with each other. She didn't sense jealousy or anger between them.

Perhaps she didn't need to worry so much about that Force bond after all. They were adults. She was just an old woman who couldn't manage to raise her daughter or not pick fights with her husband.

When she awoke a little over a week after her conversation with Rey, it was pouring. Despite this, or because of it, Mara went through her usual motions, but she hiked further into the forest this time, into the deeper forest where the tree tops were so close together the rain was but a gentle mist here. She was already soaked, but she settled in for her meditation anyway. It wasn't cold enough on this planet for getting wet to get her sick.

Mid morning, she sensed them before she heard them. Three figures moved through the forest, Finn in the lead, following her tracks. Well, she wasn't trying to hide.

Mara was working through a combat pattern when they reached her, her gaze straight ahead, moving through the familiar motions, finishing with a strike that would have cut an opponent shoulder to hip. She turned off the humming training blade and turned to face the three.

Rey expression was a mask of neutrality. Finn paused some feet away and eyed her calculatingly, and Poe was having a more difficult time controlling the dislike flickering over his expression.

“Yes?” Mara asked, lifting a red brow at them as if she couldn't feel the sense that they were here only because they had to be.

Rey sighed, the sigh of a woman who was resolved to deal with something whether she wanted to or not. “What do you know about Force Bonds?”

Was her daughter kriffing serious?

Mara shot a glance towards the tree tops, wondering if this was some sort of justice for all her past misdeeds.

“You really want me to tell you?” Mara asked bluntly. There was no sense in beating around the bush with Rey.

“Luke Skywalker said you could explain it better than he could,” Poe said, and she could tell he wanted to grit his teeth and was fighting not to.

Finn just continued watching her with those calculating brown eyes.

If they ever had children, a stray thought told her, they would definitely be brown eyed.

“You three are Force bonded, for one,” Mara replied at last. “You want to discuss it out here or go back to base?”

“We went to the trouble of hiking all the way out here, let's do it here,” Rey said with the attitude of one who hated to waste any effort.

“Might take awhile,” Mara admitted, but she took a meditative pose on the moss she'd been sitting on a few hours ago.

Finn, Poe, and Rey exchanged a three way glance, then the three took seats across from her. Rey sat in the middle, her knees touching both Finn and Poe's. The three of them leaned in closely to each other.

Mara was glad Rey had these two to lean on, though she didn't entirely know what all had transpired between the three of them. They had been intimate, somehow, else the blue fire she saw between them wouldn't be so strong.

Three sets of hard brown eyes looked at her expectantly.

She was sitting in the middle of a forest, in the rain, explaining Force bonds to these kids. Kriff.

“Force bonds typically form between two or more Force sensitive individuals,” she began in an even tone. “Often in the past it would be between Master and padawan, student, but sometimes it was romantic.” She lifted a brow and swept her gaze between the three of them. She saw the disbelieving expression on Poe's face. “Poe Dameron, are you really that surprised? You grew up near a Force tree. That's going to wake up any latent talent, though admittedly you aren't that strong in the Force, not like Rey and Finn. But it's there all the same, and evidently enough to bond with them. All three of you feel very strongly about each other, emotionally, so you force bonding isn't the strangest thing I've seen.”

“So what does it mean, for the three of us?” Finn finally spoke, his deep voice serious.

“If something happened to one of you, the other two would feel it, and it might adversely affect them, it might not,” Mara answered. “But it's also a strength. You and Rey can help strengthen Poe's mental shields against the intrusion of anyone else.” She huffed. “Which you may want to do, by the way. Poe your surface thoughts are leaking everywhere.” 

Kriff, she thought again when she saw the growing panic in the pilot's eyes. Finn and Rey immediately pulled him closer to them, until Poe was in Finn's lap and Rey was leaning her head on his shoulder.

“I'm not going to enter your mind without permission, Poe Dameron,” Mara told him seriously as the other two glared at her. “I know every well what that kind of intrusion feels like and what it can do to a person.” Her eyes went distant and she flinched, remembering the mental touch of Palpatine.

“Do you really?” Poe asked, his tone indicating he didn't believe her.

Mara's shoulders tensed.

“Did Rey or Finn tell you I was once a Hand of the Emperor?” Mara bit the words out, fighting to keep venom out of her voice. “From the time I was a child until the Emperor's death, I was a part of the Imperial court. The Emperor invaded my mind more times than I can count, Poe. He striped me of all defenses against him and took what he pleased. He shoved conditioning upon me that made serving him euphoric and denying him absolute hell.”

She remembered the first time she'd fought back, and the utter physical and mental agony she'd been left him.

“So yes, Poe Dameron, I know what it's like.” Mara all but spat the words.

She saw the confusion, then the horror, flickering over their expressions.

This is why I couldn't raise you right, Breha, Mara thought. This is why I was afraid.

She didn't realize she'd said the words aloud until she saw Rey flinch. 

“There are different types of Force bonds,” Mara forced the words from her lips. They needed to know this. “The kind between the three of you can be very beneficial, and Force bonds can make it easier for you to keep each other happy. But it also makes it easier for you to hurt each other. What Palpatine did to me almost killed me when Darth Vader killed it. It took me weeks to even become remotely functional again. And in his dying moments he ordered me through that Bond to kill Luke Skywalker. It took everything I had to deny that order after the first time Luke and I fought, then ended up having to ally against a common enemy.”

Her eyes were hard as she regarded the mixture of anger, uncertainty, and pity in the trios expressions.

The pity above all she despised.

“It is essential that the three of you work together and that the three of you keep communication open between you,” Mara told them firmly. “Negative feelings can fester. Don't let them. Don't lose what you have between you, not like I lost what Luke and I had.”

And then their presence was too much, and Mara found herself jerkily standing and marching deeper into the forest.

No one tried to follow.


	6. Resolve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Mara take the first step to repairing their relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to LucasArts/Disney.

She let herself wander mindlessly for an hour, knowing there wasn't any native fauna out here that was likely to try and kill her, but moved carefully on the forest floor to avoid swampy terrain. That could kill you as easily as hunting fauna.

Her internal clock told her it was late when her steps finally turned back in the direction of the base, and she was greeted by the Night watch when she reached the edge. She heard the shift of blasters being aimed at her as she wandered out of the dark.

Mara barked in laughter, harsh and clear. “Mara Jade Skywalker,” she identified herself to the troopers on patrol.

She could almost see their shadows in the dark, shifting the blasters back down so they were no longer aimed at her, and a tight voice responding. “You can pass then.”

Skywalker was still a name that set some people on edge.

She wandered to her ship and forced a ration bar down her throat before kicking off her boots and falling, still fully clothed, into bed. She stared up at the ceiling of her bunk, forcing herself into a meditative trance to calm her mind.

She felt utterly raw from her discussion with Rey, Finn, and Poe. She grimanced in rememberance at the look of pity in their expressions. She despised pity above all else, and would rather they hate her than pity her.

Anger could be channeled into something useful, but pity and self loathing were emotions that served little purpose in Mara's life.

Finally she let herself doze, falling into an uneasy sleep.

She woke perhaps two hours later, feeling a mental scream of anguish from somewhere across the base. Before she was fully awake she moved instinctively, sitting up and starting to pull her boots on. When she reached the ship entrance, she was awake enough to pause.

She let her senses roam through the Force and found the cause of the anguish exactly where she expected it.

Then she curled her lips in disgust at her own actions and kicked her boots off, wandering grumpily back to her bunk. The last person Luke would want to deal with right now, in the middle of a nightmare, was her.

She spent most of the rest of the night tossing and turning in that bunk, and rose feeling irritable and fuzzy headed. She was too old for this shit. Yet when the alarm went off at 05:30, she got up and went through the refresher, then dressed and moved through her ship towards the exit, wanting nothing more than caf and food from the mess.

The sight that greeted her when her boots hit the tarmac made her freeze.

Rey drifted out of the early morning fog, brown eyes hard to fathom as she paused mere meters from Mara. Then the younger woman heaved a sigh. “I want to talk.”  
“It's going to be over breakfast then because I can't think without caf,” Mara informed her brusquely. 

Rey just shrugged and took a few steps in the direction of the mess hall and glanced over her shoulder at Mara to see if the other woman was coming. 

Mara felt an ache beginning in her temple as she caught up to Rey and the two women silently crossed the tarmac and wove through the mess to the mess. Rey collected a tray of food and some drink Mara recognized as fruit juice while Mara poured sweetener into bitter black caf. They found a half empty table and Mara took the seat beside Rey, wondering at this unfamiliar sensation.

Rey let Mara get half way through the mug of caf before she spoke again.

“I don't know if I've forgiven you yet, but I need to work with you,” Rey told her as she carefully peeled a piece of fruit with her fingers. 

Mara lifted a red brow and grunted, forcing her good eye to focus on the girl. She felt a stab of guilt when she saw the vulnerable look on the young woman's face.

“Work with me how, exactly?” Mara asked in a softer voice.

“I talked, a lot time, last night with Leia, and Finn, and Poe,” Rey said, choosing her words carefully. “Leia says our family has lost enough and that those of us who are left can't afford to turn each other away. We have too many enemies already, we need allies.” Rey bit her lip a moment. “I didn't have a family, most of my childhood and into adulthood. And now I've got one, and I'm not sure what to do with them. It's hard to relate to Luke because he'll go through phases of being a pleasant teacher and then moments of self loathing. And you I don't even really know, not anymore.”

Mara turned her green gaze towards Rey and saw the conflicting emotions in the girl's brown eyes. “Well, Leia's right about one thing,” she told her daughter. “We do need allies. You and I are on the same side in this war.” She sighed. “I don't really know how to be a mother, Rey, nor will I ever ask you to call me that if you don't want to, but we _are_ family.”

“What you did...you did because you wanted me safe, because you loved me?” Rey asked.

“Yes,” Mara said. “Partly out of love and partly out of fear. I feared what my influence on you might be. You're alive, I'm glad for that. You've lived through so much you shouldn't have had to. You're still my daughter, in my mind. I still love you, though I'm shit at expressing it.”

“So, we start from here,” Rey said, her voice gaining confidence. “I try and understand you and you try and understand me, and we work together. We are family, even if we don't really feel..”

“Like mother and daughter?” Mara finished in a wry voice. “Alright then.” She offered a hand. “I'm Mara Jade Skywalker.”

“I'm Rey Skywalker,” Rey said firmly, shaking Mara's hand. She glanced at Mara's mostly empty place and her own empty one. “Will you come and train with us today?” she asked.

“With you and Finn?” Mara asked. She nodded. “If you want me to, then I will.”

Rey gave her a sort of half smile. “Okay then.”

They dropped off their dishes and headed together to the training room. Mara's heart felt lighter than it had in days.

Finn was already there, and he shot Rey a knowing look when Mara followed her daughter into the room. He gave Mara a calculating look. “Just don't hurt her again,” he said in an even tone.

Mara considered the boy for a long moment before she nodded.

The three settled into meditative poses for the first portion of the morning. After half an hour though, Mara was surprised Luke wasn't here yet. She stood and glanced towards the door, frowning at Finn and Rey. “Is Luke usually this late?”

Rey's brow creased. “Not usually. He's usually early, actually. He didn't look good yesterday though, I don't think he's slept well the past night or two.”

Mara reached out with her mind monetarily and cursed under her breath.

“Rey, your Master hasn't slept more than an hour or two a night since getting back to base,” she told her daughter.

Rey's eyes widened a bit, and Mara could see the concern in her eyes. 

Finn frowned. “How do you know that?” he asked, torn between concern for Luke, and curiosity.\

“Force bond,” Mara replied. She gestured. “Come on, you two, we're going to find Luke Skywalker and find out why he hasn't been sleeping, though I can make a guess as to why.”

Surprise in their features, Finn and Rey followed her.


	7. Broken Bridges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Skywalker family continues to work on rebuilding old bridges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to Disney/LucasArts.
> 
> find me on tumblr nytemere.tumblr.com

This time of morning Leia Organa-Solo could usually be found in her office or the training room. The sound of raised voices as Mara, Rey, and Finn approached Luke Skywalker’s rooms in the residential section of the base indicated that Leia was in neither location this morning.

Even with the muffled words, they could all hear the concern in Leia’s voice, and an undercurrent of anger at Luke, Mara would guess, for not taking care of himself.

Mara brought them up short at the door and wrapped firmly on the durasteel. The arguing continued within and after a few minutes no one had answered the door. Mara rolled her eyes and eyed the security panel at the door for a moment before entering a rapid series of numbers and the door slid open.

Rey lifted her brows at that, since Mara evidently knew Luke’s code but hadn’t spoken to him once since he and Rey had returned to base.

As the door slid open, Leia paused mid-sentence, took a long look at Mara, and then nodded, her eyes gleaming. “You talk to him, Mara, he won’t listen to me.” 

Luke opened his mouth to mutter a protest but Leia was already out the door, gently putting a hand on both Rey and Finn’s shoulders and guiding them down the hall. “You two with me. Luke and Mara have a lot to work out.”

Mara suddenly found herself alone with her husband, a husband she hadn’t seen in over half a decade and had fought badly with the last time they had seen each other.

Luke shot a glance of weary anger at her as he ran his fingers through his gray hair. His hair was still damp from the refresher, but even clean he looked haggard. Dark circles like bruises shown under both eyes and his jaw clenched with tension. His entire body was wound too tight.

“When was the last time you talked to anyone about your nightmares, Luke?” Mara asked in her blunt fashion.

“It’s been awhile,” Luke muttered. “But do you actually give a kriff?” His voice lacked the venom he intended though. He just sounded tired. 

“Believe it or not, I do,” Mara replied. “You’ve been dreaming about the Temple again. The dreams started when you started training Rey, didn’t they?”

Luke looked startled, actually raising his blue eyes to meet her green. “How did you know that?” he demanded.

Mara laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You could never entirely keep me out, Luke, not after you and I were married. I had Force visions of our daughter dying in that temple. Its part of what drove me to do what I did. If I could abandon our daughter on Jakku over a Force vision of that massacre, it isn’t a stretch to think the actual event is giving you nightmares again after being reunited with your daughter after years apart.”

Luke sighed, and asked in a soft voice. “Do you really think he would have killed her, if you hadn’t hidden her?”

Mara cocked her head. “I think there’s a very high probability he would have. That certainty cannot undo the damage and pain our daughter endured. But if I went back in time, I’d hide her again. This time around though, I’d hide with her.”

Luke really did look as if he was about to fall over, and Mara turned, briefly pressing the button to close the door, and then gently shoved Luke back towards his bed. The back of his knees hit the cot and he landed on it, sitting and staring up at her for several silent moments.

“So you’re going to help with their training now?” he asked, his gaze unreadable except for the exhaustion.

“I’m going to help where I can in their training,” Mara replied. “My training was very different. But I walk the line. I might be able to help them with that. No more running. No more hiding. The time for that has passed.”

“I couldn’t have stayed in hiding anyway after Rey came to get me,” Luke admitted. “It was impossible to say no to her.” He gave a tired smile. “She’s even more stubborn than you were.”

“She’d have to be, to survive what she did,” Mara replied.

“So I guess you and I are going to need to learn to deal with each other again,” Luke sighed again. When he met her gaze again, she saw a combination of anger, and a deep seated longing.

Kriff she’d missed him.

When he patted the bed beside him, Mara sat down next to him, their knees not quite touching. “It’s been a long time,” she said softly.

“It has,” Luke agreed. “And we didn’t part on the best of terms.” 

“No, we didn’t.” Mara shrugged. “But that’s on both of us, Luke. You can’t blame yourself solely for what happened at the Temple. Kylo Ren’s fall is not all on your shoulders. In our marriage, both of us had our issues, and we never did try and sit down and work those issues out. We were both too busy, for each other and for our daughter. We made the same mistakes that Leia and Han made.”

“I guess we did.” 

She was still catching the undercurrent of self loathing in his Force signature. Instinctively she reached out and smacked his shoulder, hard. “Stop that Luke,” she growled. “Self loathing and self pity aren’t going to help anyone right now. We still need to own up to our guilt, but we cannot afford to wallow in it. We cannot change the past, we can only try and make up for what we can and move forward.”

He glared at her. “And how do you propose we do that, Mara Jade Skywalker?”

“We teach those two Force sensitive kids to try and avoid the pitfalls and traps we fell into. We tell them about our mistakes, so they can learn from them,” Mara said evenly. “We teach them to learn from the past, rather than repeating it. And we help them and that Force-bond mate of theirs. This is a war, Luke, and they’re suffering as much or more as we are because of it.”

“And us?” Luke asked, his voice soft again, an undercurrent of uncertainty. “This thing between us?”

She knew he wasn’t just referring to their Force Bond.

“We learn to actually communicate with each other,” she told him. “We try and work as allies, maybe friends.” Her eyes grew sad. “I never did stop loving you, Luke Skywalker, for all that we fought.”

He smiled sadly. “I never fell out of love with you, Mara.”

Tentatively, she offered him a hand. “So we work together, and we move forward. We can’t go back and pick up where we left off, but we can try and start again. We’re still going to fight, we’re still going to disagree, but this time, we don’t give up like we did. ”

Luke stared at her hand for several minutes before, carefully, he entwined his fingers with hers.


	8. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke finally gets some sleep and Mara begins to find a new place within the Resistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to LucasArts/Disney

Mara left Luke’s quarters feeling exhausted and yet some how very calm. She and Luke had spent some hours talking, discussing their past fights, their time apart since the fall of the Temple, some of the issues that had always driven a wedge between them, Rey’s past, and future of the two Force users Luke and Leia now trained.

Finally exhaustion over took Luke, but when Mara left him sleeping in his bed, his expression looked peaceful, and would hopefully sleep for hours, getting his first real sleep in days.

She sought Rey, and by extension Finn and Poe, out first. She wasn’t surprised to find the three in the hanger, since Poe had upkeep on Black One, and Rey had modifications she wanted to make to the Falcon. She was even less surprised to find Black One parked very near the Falcon, or perhaps it was the other way around. 

Finn was handing Rey a series of tools and noticed her first. She could almost see his expression change as he communicated on a mental level with his partners, something he probably wasn’t entirely aware of doing. Rey emerged from the compartment she was examining and Poe crawled out from under Black One. All three bond-mates were liberally streaked with engine oil. 

She could see the connection flowing between them, and it made her smile faintly.

“Don’t know how much time you three actually want to spend around me, given circumstances,” Mara began as she shoved her hands into her pockets. “But I’m around, if you do.” Her brow creased a moment. “One thing I want to each you three more about is that Force Bond of yours, how you, Rey, and Finn, can help strengthen Poe’s mental shields, and how, Poe, you can help ground the two of them.” She sighed, thinking back to the connection between herself and Luke. She could still feel him sleeping across the base. “Luke and I mucked things up between us pretty well. I don’t want to see that happen to the three of you. It’s painful, to say the least.”

Poe’s mouth formed a thin line for a moment then it cleared and he shrugged. “If Rey’s willing to deal with you, I will. Issues between her and you, so I’ll take my lead from her.”

“So will I,” Finn piped in.

Mara could see Rey roll her eyes in exasperated affection at her boys before she addressed Mara. “I said this morning I wanted interact, so yeah, I’ll go along. But if I’m resistant to something, don’t push me; let me take it in on my own timeline.”

“Fair enough,” Mara agreed. “Luke will hopefully sleep through until morning, so I think you and Finn are free from lessons for the rest of the day.”

Rey bit her lower lip for a moment. “How…is he?”

“Exhausted,” Mara answered truthfully. “The distance between Luke and I is going to take awhile to resolve itself, but he didn’t seem as troubled when I left his rooms.” 

“Are you going to push him?” Rey demanded.

Mara quirked an eyebrow at her daughter. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I often had to push Luke towards some kind of resolution in the past. He was always a bit more hesitant than I was. But I know I can’t push him too far. It’ll be a learning curve, for both of him.”

Rey eyed her speculatively then nodded. “Just be nice to each other,” she ordered her mother.

“That’s the idea,” Mara said. “I’ll leave you all to your ships and each other.” She started to turn then paused. “Oh, one thing: intimacy strengthens the bond. I don’t mean just sex. I mean cuddling; being with your partners, touch. Sex is certainly a part of it and can strengthen it even more, but intimacy in general is the most important thing.”

Finn would have been blushing had he been pale skinned. Rey looked bemused, and Poe as if he was considering the implications of Mara’s words. She left them there to think on it, then went looking for her sister-in-law.

Of course Leia was in meetings, she had a Resistance to run, and Mara ended up leaving a message for Leia, thinking that Leia and Luke still had some things to work out for themselves.

The rest of her day she spent in the company of mechanics, occasionally casting a glance across the hanger towards Rey, Poe, and Finn. The three of them vanished together sometime that afternoon, and she thought it best to leave them alone.

Unsurprisingly, none of the three of them were at dinner. 

Mara had settled herself at the end of one bench, applying herself absently to her food as she scrolled through a datapad when she sensed movement around her. She jerked her head up, vaguely surprised to see a couple of Poe’s pilots settling themselves on the bench across from her and one beside her. She felt a sense of restlessness, but not any real unease. 

One of the pilots a younger one from the look of him, just applied himself to his food, but one woman, Jessica Pava, if Mara recalled her name correctly, regarded Mara with a measuring gaze.

“So, you’re giving our squad leader relationship advise?” Pava asked as she started to spear a vegetable on her plate with her fork.

“I’m giving the three of them advise on dealing with a Force Bond,” Mara replied evenly as she set her data pad beside her tray. “Why?”

“Dameron’s happiness is important to us, as is Finn and Rey’s,” the tall man beside Mara replied. She tilted her head slightly to look at Temmin Wexley, called Snap. “So we’re curious.”

Mara found her lips twisting into a smile at the pilot’s concern for their friends.

“The three of them had a fairly strong bond,” Mara told them. “The three of them working together on that bond and maintaining it is best for their mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. I know first hand what negative effects a Force Bond can have. I’d rather they not experience it.”

Another pilot, Iolo Arana buttered his roll and weighted her words. “So you’d say you would hope to have their best interests at heart?”

These pilots had interesting methods of interrogation, Mara thought.

“I do,” she replied. “I’d rather they be happy, even if they have nothing to do with me.”

She saw brief looks of satisfaction pass over the pilots’ expressions, before it was replaced by curiosity on Pava’s face. “So, you were married to Luke Skywalker, huh?”

I recognize that look, Mara thought with amusement. Pava was a fan of Jedi Luke Skywalker (in Pava’s defense many people were).

“Technically we’re still married,” Mara told her between bites of her own food. “What will happen with that, we’ll see. Luke and I have a lot of history.”

“Got any exciting stories?” Pava asked, leaning in. Mild amusement, and some curiosity, flickered on Snap and Arana’s faces.

“Why don’t I tell you about the first time Luke and I worked together?” Mara suggested. 

“So we were facing off against one of the Emperor’s Hands,” she began as they leaned in.


	9. A New Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mara begins to establish a routine with her fractured family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to LucasArts/Disney.
> 
> find me on tumblr: nytemere.tumblr.com

Mara found new patterns developing as she slowly integrated back into her family over the next few weeks.

She ate breakfast with Finn and Rey every morning, though Poe was there on mornings he had to be up for missions or briefings.  Finn and Rey had both mentioned Poe didn't get up until he absolutely had to. After breakfast the three of them would head to the training room to meet Luke, and occasionally Leia when she could spare the time, and run through meditation and training exercises.

When she passed Poe during the day he'd usually greet her with a nod or a wave, evidently slowly warming up to the idea that she was going to be a part of his forcebonded mates' lives.  He approached her late one afternoon when Finn and Rey were off with Luke and they'd had what Mara felt was a fairly decent conversation.

"If you ever hurt Rey like that again, I'll be at your throat, but for now..well I don't know like it, but I understand why you made the decisions you did," Poe finally told her.  "You showed it in a twisted way, but you do love Rey, and you care about keeping her safe."

"You put it in a kinder way than I would," Mara informed him.

Poe shrugged.  "My mother told me there was no point in running over the same carcass repeatedly.  We can't change where we've been, only where we are going."

"Shara Bey was a good woman," Mara replied.

Poe nodded, his eyes a little sad for a moment.  "She was.  I wish she could have met Rey and Finn."

"She'd have loved them," Mara smiled faintly.  "And she'd been so proud of you."

They parted before dinner, Poe off to find Finn and Rey, and Mara to go work on whatever ships needed fixing on base.  Finn and Rey usually ate dinner with whatever pilots weren't off on missions or patrols, and Poe when he was home. 

Mara knew Luke and Leia ate dinner together most evenings, and over the past three weeks she'd only joined them a hand full of times.  Usually she'd grab a ration bar while working on a ship, or while reading or meditating on her own ship.

Mara and Luke had been working together for the past three weeks to train Finn and Rey, some days taking them away from the base for more practical combat training and other lessons not conducive to random people potentially wandering in to the middle of a lesson.  As Mara had suspected, Rey's strengths lay in the use of the Force for offensive and defensive purposes.  She was learning to form physical shields with the power of the Force, barriers of protection, and also how to manipulate the Force around other beings as a weapon.

Finn had an astonishing ability to sense things in the Force.  He had strong combat skills, but more than once Luke pulled him away to work on his sensing abilities while Rey and Mara would spar.

Today had been a particularly intense sparing session between mother and daughter, just barely ending in a draw.  Mara knew that soon Rey would hold the upper hand more often than not due to her flexibility and age.  When they returned to base Mara had retired to her ship to use the refresher and now stood beneath the ship, absently chewing on a ration bar while she fiddled the engine.

That was where an exasperated Luke found her.  She slid out from under the ship and tilted her head at him, wondering what had brought him all the way out here.  "Yes?" she asked curiously.

"Is there a reason you're still living on your ship?" Luke asked, and she sensed exasperation and a hint of affection through their bond.  "I know you aren't going anywhere, so why don't you settle into actual quarters for once?"

Mara blinked at him.  "I've been living on ship for years, a little hard to break the habit, I suppose," she replied.  She shrugged then.  "Honestly haven't thought much about it.  Where would I room?  With pilots, mechanics, officers, support crew?"

"You are impossible, Mara Jade Skywalker," Luke sighed.  "Did it ever occur to you to room with me?"

Mara felt her cheeks heat like a youth rather than the usually confident older woman she was.  Truth was she wanted to be around Luke more, she wanted to recapture what they had, but she wasn't certain how to.  They'd both been changed by the events of the past, and there were days she felt Luke wasn't someone she deserved.  She wanted him, mind and body, and to know she was the woman he spent his nights with.

Of course hiding this churning emotions from him through their Force bond was impossible.  Luke's expression softened and he stepped up, opening his arms.  She felt like she was in her twenties again, the first time she'd stepped into his arms, though now she simply pressed her cheek to his shoulder and felt his arms close around her.

"I don't know how to start again," she admitted.

"Then don't start again, just start," Luke told her. "Come have dinner with me, and come back to my quarters...our quarters, tonight?"

She looked up at him and his blue eyes looked almost shy for a moment, a look she hadn't seen on his face in decades.

"I want to," she said.  "I've missed you so, Luke.  It's been too many years.  I can't take us back in time, but I can make the most of what time we have now.

She felt her body heat as she pressed against him, and a familiar, no longer forgotten wicked smile flicker over her lips.  "Together then?"

The heat grew in his own eyes and he nodded.  "Together, my love."

Luke let her close up the ship and put her tools away, and then they walked, hand in hand, towards the mess, together.


	10. Ever Shifting Sands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mara and Luke grow closer and the Resistance must deal with increasing hostilities from the First Order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Star Wars belongs to Disney/LucasArts
> 
> find me on tumblr: nytemere.tumblr.com
> 
> This particular fic will remain fade to black due to rating but for those curious there will be a one shot smut-fic in the next week or so.

Mara awoke screaming into the dark.

Shooting up in bed, her hands instinctively reached towards the blaster beside the bed. The movement of someone beside her and the feel of a cool metallic hand on her arm brought her back to herself. She heaved several breaths in and out, recentering herself to the feel of that familiar hand on her arm and the warmth of the body pressed against her own, an arm wrapping around her waist, Luke's chin resting on her shoulder as he held her from behind.

"What was it?" Luke asked, his sleep rough voice chasing away the last vestiges of the nightmare. He was alive, Rey was alive, and they were on the Resistance base on D'Qar, not the ever shifting sands of Jakku.

She wondered if their daughter had nightmares about sand. She knew Luke did, sometimes.

"Sand and blood," she told him, not wanting to describe the sight of their dead bodies and blood pouring out onto the sand in front of her, with a hideous grin fixed on the face of some horror in black.

"Mm," Luke replied, pressing a kiss against her neck. "We're safe here, Mara," he told her.

Neither of them said the words they were both thinking. They were safe here, at least for now.

It was only the third night she'd lain beside him in years, but the familiarity of his warmth and the physical comfort he provided...

Mara never wanted to be without that again. 

She turned in his arms, pressing her lips firmly against his own, willing herself to get lost in Luke's warmth and his presence, in the passion that still lingered between them, after all these years.

Luke chuckled softly, recognizing this familiar tactic from early in their marriage, and rolled onto his back, pulling her down on top of him as they kissed.

"We won't be willingly separated again," he promised her.

~~

In the coming weeks, Mara felt a shift in the energy around the base. Something was on the horizon and everyone could feel it. She'd exchange looks with Luke, or with Rey, Finn, or Poe, at meals. Poe was flying missions with his squadron, and Finn and Rey would chew on their lower lips some when they thought Mara or Luke weren't looking during lessons.

In the days that Poe Dameron was off base, Mara would watch her daughter and Finn, and she could see the looks in their eyes when they connected with the pilot through that Force bond of theirs. It might be more difficult, Mara thought at times, if none of the three had been Force sensitive. At least with the Force bond they had the ability to reach out and sense their mate, to know that Poe was still alive.

There were reports of First Order activity: attacks on small settlements and the like, where the Resistance would rush to the scene and find burned out buildings and dead bodies. It wore on everyone, knowing the Order was out there, taunting them.

Finn was working on both his training as a Force Sensitive and with Resistance Intelligence. He told Mara and Rey one morning at breakfast that a few of their operatives had gone missing. While normally he wouldn't give many details, Mara suspected suspended the rules for the Jedi on base.

Poe would return to base, exhausted and sometimes with a haunted look in his eyes. Mara would watch Finn and Rey take him into their care as soon as his debrief was over. After one particularly grueling mission (Mara could sense the grief coming off the young man in waves, and suspected he'd seen yet another destroyed village), she'd advised Rey and Finn that night to take the following day off and spend it with Poe. The three of them needed each other, and needed to simply spend time alone with each other to strengthen their bond.

She and Luke rose early that following morning and ate breakfast in the mess, their knees touching as they sat side by side on the bench. Neither were surprised when an Ensign approached them and advised that General Organa wanted to see them.

"Something's coming to a head," Luke told his wife as the two of them walked through the halls of the base. He still wore his gray Jedi robes, as he always did, and she was still wearing her flight suits, their hands swinging next to each other and occasionally catching as they walked.

"A disturbance in the Force?" Mara asked with an arched red brow.

"Possibly," Luke replied, a frown creasing his brow. "Something to do with the First Order, so I would assume the Knights are involved."

"Well they-"

Mara's words were cut off by a sudden rushing noise in her ears. She felt her blood pounding, heard her own heartbeat, and the world went foggy for a moment until the haze seemed to fade like a slowly dying fog. She saw a smashed black mask on the ground, Storm troopers in white marching out of the darkness, the screams of the dying. Then she found herself moving through a set of burned out buildings, walking cautiously. Something caught her eye and she knelt, pushing over the body of a fallen soldier. The Resistance crest on the shoulder sent waves of cold fear through her.

Just as suddenly, she was back in the hallway. She heard Luke distantly calling her name and her head ached. She knew she'd seen the beginnings of, and the aftermath, of an attack by the First Order, but where?

She shook her hurting head and her green eyes slowly refocused on Luke. Concern etched his features and he was holding her up by the shoulders. She realized his hands were the only reason she hadn't fallen to the ground.

"Mara? Mara, are you with me?" Luke asked, his voice low and urgent.

Mara sighed. "Yes...I'm here Luke. Sorry I, just"

"Force vision," he supplied for her.

Mara nodded slowly and Luke pulled her tightly to him for a moment before he took her hand firmly in his and lead her towards Leia's office again. "I want to ask now what it was, but I think it's best if we have Leia there, just in case."

"The First Order," Mara supplied. She caught the tightness in her husband's expression and nodded, feeling a similar thread of worry.

When they reached the Command Center, Leia took a single look at them and gestured for her brother and sister-in-law to follow her into her office. She could tell from the energy vibrating off of them that they needed to tell her something that they didn't want everyone hearing.

Leia poured caf for each of them when they reached her office, watching Luke shut the door behind him,

"So what did you see?" she asked Mara seriously.

Mara didn't ask Leia how she knew what had happened.

"First Order attack," Mara muttered as she took the caf gratefully and took a long sip. Luke took her hand in his, tracing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. "I saw a broken mask, and then a Storm trooper attack, marching in formation, then I saw the aftermath. Burned out ruins and dead Resistance soldiers."

"Which indicates at some point, sooner rather than later, we will probably be attacked," Leia sighed. "Either here or elsewhere." Leia gazed seriously at her brother and then turned her gaze towards the terminal in her office. "It could be we've been on D'Qar too long."

"I don't know that it was D'Qar," Mara cautioned. 

"Could be though," Leia replied reasonably. "I will talk to my staff about doubling patrols. We've talked about moving base, but it may be better that we do so sooner rather than later. In the meantime, we can rule drills, test our preparedness."

"You'd do that based on a Force Vision?" Mara asked.

"You did less on the same," Leia pointed out. "And we've had rumblings recently. I would rather be safe then sorry." She steepled her fingers. "I would like the two of you back in Command at 15:00 for a meeting. I want my top advisors and officers to meet and discuss the idea of moving."

"We'll be there," Luke promised. He glanced back at Mara, and he could tell her head still hurt from the vision. "Until them, I'd like some time with my wife."

Leia smiled faintly. "Of course. We will see you this afternoon."

Mara didn't resist when Luke pulled her to her feet and lead her from the room. She usually had headaches like this after a Force vision. She always dealt with the pain and moved on.

It was nice, though, for once, to have someone who cared about her helping out a bit.


End file.
